Firewatch review bombed on Steam following DMCA takedown against PewDiePie - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/firewatch-is-getting-review-bombed-on-steam/ <comment><AUTHOR> I really hope that the devs actions don't become a common occurrence.

If the dev asked YouTube to take down all content that had his games in it I think it would be okay. To target just one user because of a word that he said non maliciously is wrong.

If you take a look at the developer website they explicitly say "it's okay for you to stream our game". [http://www.firewatchgame.com/about/#streaming](http://www.firewatchgame.com/about/#streaming)

Edit: added link to their site stating their attitude for streamers.

<comment><USER2> I disagree, it isn't the first time he has done something like this, and it isn't something you would want related to your product(even loosely).

The argument made by the game company is fairly straightforward too I believe.

"I am sick of this child getting more and more chances to make money off of what we make. He's worse than a closeted racist: he's a propagator of despicable garbage that does real damage to the culture around this industry."

<comment><USER3> So there were no copyright infringement but now there is, and only by that guy, other streamers are OK? That's funny. This is a misuse of the law and a markedly unethical behavior, why nobody sees it?

<comment><USER4> A developer, if they so wish, can allow third-parties the use of their property in some use-cases that are beyond "critique or satire".

In this case FWD allows this explicitly for youtubers in general, but have withdrawn this permission to PDP in particular because they do not wish to see their product associated with a racist.

How is this a "misuse of the law"? Please explain.

<comment><USER5> Even if they wanted to remove him the rights to use their game, they should have warned him first to remove it himself and if he did not comply then it will be somewhat moral to dmca him. Without warning he did not break dmca because they say on their website that it is ok to stream their game for everyone.

<comment><USER6> > they should have warned him first to remove it himself

Why?

<comment><USER7> Because it's good form to tell someone if you intend to take a right you granted them away before you use legal tools against them?

<comment><USER6> Good form is for every day people, it's not for people behaving like massive fucking bellends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, according to the article:

1) Developer revokes streaming license of asshole.

2) Developer gets down-vote-brigaded, with most of them (43 out of last 50) having 0 hours played, and called "sjw" by "snowflakes" (to use their parlance) upset about said revocation.

Besides the face-palm worthy outrage, what does Steam think about 0-hours- played reviews?

<comment><USER9> There is no such thing as a streaming license.

<comment><USER8> Mea culpa, mentally replace with whatever phrasing best describes: the dev changes their mind on "fan streaming is cool" to "fan streaming is cool, besides PDP, who sucks and shouldn't use our products in his streams".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm confused. It appears that the justification for this DMCA was that they felt that PewDiePie was making their product look bad.

Are you really allowed to DMCA anything that makes your product look bad? Because that would surely include criticism of your product.

If that is the case, then that is a very bad precedent to set. Companies like Warner Bros were forced to issue refunds for their buggy game Arkham Knight[1] because people uploaded videos to YouTube which made their product look bad.

PewDiePie himself, along with many other YouTubers, did severe damage to Warner Bros brand, when he uploaded video of himself trying to play their buggy game. I suppose Warner Bros should have DMCA'd his videos.

[1] [http://www.pcgamer.com/warner-bros-is-suspending-sales-of- ba...](http://www.pcgamer.com/warner-bros-is-suspending-sales-of-batman- arkham-knight-for-pc/)

<comment><USER7> No, you are not allowed to DMCA anything that makes your product look bad, e.g. a game critique/review likely can use game footage under under fair use.

For a normal game stream the assumption seems to be that fair use likely won't work, so those can be DMCAd for the simple reason of "using our material and we don't like it/haven't allowed it".

In this specific case, they publicly gave permission to streamers though, so it wouldn't be a copyright violation anymore. Question is if they can just go and revoke that for the individual case. Would need to be tested in court, which I suspect is unlikely to happen.

<comment><USER10> I still don't see how Warner Bros could not have used exactly the same justification to DMCA streamers to cover up their defective product. That's exactly what Samsung did to people making _jokes_ about their exploding phones. [1]

Well, I know that I would certainly think twice about streaming any games now, and risking getting a DMCA strike on my channel. I guess I'd have to watch my mouth and not say anything that would anger the developers, lest they punish me.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/samsung-sets-its- reput...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/samsung-sets-its-reputation- fire-bogus-dmca-takedown-notices)

<comment><USER7> That's the underlying issue to DMCA and how it's implemented: they can DMCA everything, even if they are in the wrong doing so, since it doesn't really have bad consequences for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what racist thing did he say?

<comment><USER7> stream snippet: [https://oddshot.tv/s/g_05U6](https://oddshot.tv/s/g_05U6)</comment></comment>


Wealthy mortgage borrowers face cold shoulder from lenders - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-21/well-heeled-mortgage-borrowers-face-cold-shoulder-from-lenders <comment> 1-6 To read the article, just put a period (.) at the end of the domain. Eg. domain.com/article --> domain.com./article

<comment><USER2> Do you know why does it work?

<comment><USER3> It didn't work for me. Instead it said I'm in private mode and said I should subscribe to keep reading.

I'm using Firefox FWIW.

<comment><USER4> This [https://pastebin.com/UiyghKpq](https://pastebin.com/UiyghKpq) userscript should fix it. I found it few years ago somewhere on reddit. It works on multiple media sites that don't like private mode.

And "Bypass Paywalls" firefox addon removes the need to insert the dot into address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Relevant points:

>Stanley Middleman, chief executive officer of Freedom Mortgage Corp., one of the nation's biggest home-lending companies[:]

>"Whether the assets are good or not good is irrelevant because there's no liquidity to buy them,"...

>Wealthier buyers are proving to be just as likely to stop paying their mortgages. Approximately 5.5% of jumbo loans -- 131,000 borrowers -- have asked to postpone payments due to a loss of income, compared with 6% of all loans, according to Black Knight Inc.

<comment><USER6> I think the bigger point is that the jumbo loans aren't backed by Fannie and Freddie so if the risk of default is similar then it does make sense to prefer to lend to people who need conforming (under the jumbo limit) loans.

Of course, if you consider "wealthier buyers" they may have quite a few properties, and are more likely to have the resources legally to "go bankrupt" without it impacting them personally. See our POTUS for an obvious example.

So they may be more likely to default by choice because it won't ruin their lives and increase the relative risk of lending to them.

<comment><USER7> > I think the bigger point is that the jumbo loans aren't backed by Fannie and > Freddie so if the risk of default is similar then it does make sense to > prefer to lend to people who need conforming (under the jumbo limit) loans.

In the case of conforming mortgages the banks aren't lending at all. They are filing out paperwork and skimming off the top.

<comment><USER8> This is what the Fed has done for both recessions. It's a bailout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure what qualifies as wealthy, but most houses in the SF Bay Area bought in the past few years are probably financed with jumbo mortgages. E.g, 20% down on a $1MM house leaves $800k to be financed, which is greater than the $765k criteria stated in the article.

<comment><USER10> The median sales price for a house in the US is $327,000[1].

People buying houses for $1 million are wealthy by any standard.

[1] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS)

<comment><USER11> They're not wealthy by the standard of the Bay Area, which is the point of the comment you're replying to. Wealth is relative. Otherwise you could say that just about any American middle class family is wealthy — just look at the entire world's population, where anyone making over something like $40k a year would be in the top 1%.

Just to underscore the point, Palo Alto declares not too long ago that anyone making under $100k a year is considered "low income".

<comment><USER12> > Otherwise you could say that just about any American middle class family is > wealthy — just look at the entire world's population

Any middle class American is wealthy by the world's standard. The quality of life provided by middle class America is the life of the 1%. To not see this is to not understand how most of the world lives, and the challenges people face from being less lucky.

<comment><USER13> I've spent time a lot of people that live much better than me in what are considered third world countries, including overall quality of life, who make far less than I do. There are countries where money goes much further and family holds much greater value when compared to work than US culture (and laws) generally produces. They see friends and family for meals many times a week, their health care is affordable, and their jobs are more secure. It would be thought of as a cultural taboo to value work over family, whereas the majority of US employers see placing family over work as a fireable offense. Yes we have more paper wealth, but if we have to work longer hours and are spending it all on utilities, healthcare, and vastly overpriced housing, does it really matter?

Edit: This applies to countries with relatively reasonable populations with respect to their resources. This does not apply to places like China and India where there is a huge population to support.

<comment><USER14> Seriously. I sometimes cringe when I think what I could be making if I moved back to California (I'm even _from_ norcal...) but I just can't handle US workaholism (most of it performative) and the idea that even if I manage to pull off 5+ weeks of PTO a year, my spouse certainly won't, and I like living somewhere everyone gets a month off a year and even people under the median wage can afford a decent holiday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I two years I imagine the same lenders will be complaining that they drove away all their most profitable, low risk customers because of a short term risk issue.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Before the pandemic, lenders were falling over each other to welcome jumbo > borrowers, who generated fat profits even though they were the least likely > to default.

Even though? Implying loans that default are normally the most profitable? Am I misreading this?

<comment><USER17> Loans that are likely to default have higher interest rates. However, jumbo loans also have high interest rates due to the size of the principal. Although they're supposed to be less likely to default, being held by high-income individuals, if they do default then you lose more principal than a regular loan. For a bank in good times, you get to charge high interest rates normally reserved for risky borrowers on safe borrowers. More profit with less risk, what's not to like? In bad times though, when those previously safe borrowers start defaulting, even if only a few of them default they do so on larger chunks of money. Instead of losing your money with many small cuts now you could end up losing money in chunks.

<comment><USER18> But in a well working market, why wouldn't bank X provide a lower rate than bank Y if the loan is less risk and very profitable? And then bank Z sees a potential profit and undercuts bank X. Repeat until you get a rate that reflects the risk?

So the real question is: What is wrong in the high-end US mortgage market? Are banks breaking anti-trust laws and setting price floors?

<comment><USER17> Because they aren't really low risk. There's two different kinds of risk being referenced here.

Risk 1: High chance of default. This is the risk you take by lending to borrowers with poor credit.

Risk 2: Low chance of default, but when defaults happen you take a big hit. These are jumbo loans.

Banks recognize that Risk 2 has inherent costs that require a higher interest rate. My previous wording of "More profit with less risk" was false. More profit with less Risk 1, but that's because you're taking on Risk 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Where's the best place to shop for a mortgage?

Bankrate, Rocket Mortgage all claim to have the lowest rates but there's direct smaller lenders that definitely have them beat.

<comment><USER20> You want to check through different sources, direct to consumer, through a mortgage broker, and through a bank you have an existing relationship with. It is worth shopping around with the direct to consumer lending, there might be a $10k difference in closing costs for the same rate between the best and worst of 5 lenders. With a broker they will compare 10+ sources typically.

For instance Quicken/Rocket will have different rates going direct or going through a broker. If you have a lot of money invested with Chase/BOA they could give you a better rate than you would get elsewhere. The same can be true of a credit union, or you could get a discount even if you do not have a substantial amount of money invested with your bank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The bigger the mortgage then the larger their emergency fund. Right?

<comment><USER22> Underwriters like to see six months of reserves on hand, but they don't monitor that after the closing.

<comment><USER23> was close to building a house earlier this year (early March) and was talking to two lenders about construction loan. being self-employed was an extra small bump for underwriting, and I asked about loss of income because the covid19 stuff was just starting to become big news.

Both indicated that their underwriters would likely check up after closing - 30 or 60 days after - to check on income at that point, to see if there were problems, and that this was somewhat normal for them with self-employed folks, but wasn't anything related to c19 (which... I suspect some changes may occur to underwriting and loan processes in the aftermath of c19). They indicated this was just something that happens to 'a moderate portion of self-employed borrowers post-closing'.

I'm not sure what they could actually _do_ to you if they found your income had gone down or away post-closing. I was going to ask in our next call, but ... we're probably putting that whole project on the shelf for now.

<comment><USER22> Construction loans are a completely different animal. You're getting part of the money up-front before a single board is nailed down. It makes sense that they will monitor progress and costs.

<comment><USER23> monitoring after the close still struck me as a bit... odd, but not out of the realm of possibilities, I'd guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Typical non rigorous find a few examples and write a story article. Not saying not true either just that getting a few people to say something is not a trend or show what is happening in most places (possibly).

That said we just did a refi which closed today. (My own single data point anecdote).

It does make sense that the risk is greater for the mortgage companies now than in typical times in the sense that traditional borrowers who were secure and non risky in a regular economy could potentially be out of work and have a greater chance of default with the security not being worth that much.

</comment><comment><USER25> That's good. That means the banks are rational and exercising caution to avoid risks.

<comment><USER8> Nope this isn't a good phenomenon. Once again this is a result of Fed intervention. The Fed is buying mortgage backed securities as part of the stimulus package that exclude jumbo loans, so banks are being effectively saved from bad conventional loans on their books because they can sell it to the government but can't sell jumbo loans that are usually taken by more credit worthy and wealthier borrowers.

This is creating a distortion in the mortgage market that isn't rational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why exactly should we care about wealthy borrowers at this point, when millions of people are losing their jobs/health insurance...? So what if they get told no - it is not like they are living in a 500 sq ft apartment anyway

<comment><USER27> You should have empathy for everyone. You should have empathy for the pain poor people experience and the pain the rich people experience. Someone's income doesn't make them more or less human.

<comment><USER26> Not sure what this has got to do with empathy. If rich people don't get favorable mortgage, it is at max an annoyance to them. They are not going to be homeless or going to ask for food stamps. If a normal family with one home and one mortgage is not able to refinance or not able to pay their mortgage for a few months, their bank will go after them and they will end up on the street.

Sure we can talk about it and feel sorry for their inconvenience, but our time is better spent looking into much bigger problems of much bigger percentage of our population.

<comment><USER28> Keep in mind that in high cost of living areas, such as the Bay area, all housing is essentially jumbo mortgages.

If jumbo loans are not available or hard to obtain, this means that people who do lose their jobs face an illiquid market and don't have the option to sell their house to avoid default, and thus end up on the street.

<comment><USER29> I wonder what % of those with jumbo loans are completely out of a job? And further in such circumstances that they cannot afford to pay even a reduced or deferred mortgage payment? Or move into a lower cost apartment in another market? Going straight to the street tomorrow sounds like a stretch with options along the way especially for someone who was in a jumbo in the first place. Loans take a long time to default/evict and lenders are probably not in a rush to put the liability on their books right now either.

<comment><USER28> Good points.

I'm assuming the job market for non engineers in the Bay area right now is pretty tight, so for them, and assuming they have a mortgage, they might be caught between a rock and a hard place.

I don't know what percentage of the market that is though.

<comment><USER29> "I'm assuming the job market for non engineers in the Bay area right now is pretty tight, so for them, and assuming they have a mortgage, they might be caught between a rock and a hard place."

I'm not from/in the bay and not paying attention to it, so will go with your assumptions here.

Zooming out a bit on the general topic of high COL markets though, it's interesting talking with people around my high COL community who feel like they deserve to live and stay here regardless of the changing economy. Thinking out loud:

Maybe high COL markets are untenable in this economy for a certain percentage of the population?

...if there were no welfare schemes going around wouldn't these high COL areas rebalance faster to some equilibrium in line with broader affordability?

Are the handouts just further propagating an attitude of entitlement while also artificially inflating high COL markets otherwise overdue for a reset?

<comment><USER28> Well, high cost of living markets are basically propped up by the surrounding economy. It's true that the high cost of living areas would rebalance, but that can leave the current homeowners underwater.

As for the handouts part of your comment, what do you consider a handout? The stimulus checks? Is QE considered a handout?

<comment><USER29> "high cost of living markets are basically propped up by the surrounding economy."

Yes - to the extent that surrounding economy can support the general COL. So if/when the surrounding economy can no longer support a relatively high COL (in this example of mortage/rent = housing), why not just let the COL adjust proportionately to the surrounding economy?

So in the event the surrounding economy is strong & growing, the COL is also high and rising (as we've experiences over the past ~10 years). But when the surrounding economy is bad and declining, the COL should lower to match, no?

"As for the handouts part of your comment, what do you consider a handout? The stimulus checks? Is QE considered a handout? "

Yes, among others, these programs and others like it are only artificially propping up high COL areas (housing, for example) that otherwise would experience a correction (down) tied to their respective surrounding economies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> They'll lend you, just at higher rates. This is banks doing what they do, taking the umbrella now that it's raining.

<comment><USER31> > taking the umbrella now that it's raining

Always found this a very strange metaphore. Banks seem to always face criticism for 1) when they _don 't_ lend to people who need it most and 2) when they _do_ lend to people who are likely to default. It seems fairly obvious that there is a very large overlap between those groups.

<comment><USER32> The central friction is there are two conflicting views of banking:

1) Lending, insurance, and investment as a social service. People need homes. Businesses sometimes need to weather crises without bankruptcy. Startups need funding. People need educations.

2) Lending as a private investment. You want interest rate to reflect risk.

Evolving monetary theory means federal interest rates are set to reflect #1. The underlying view is that financial system is a bunch of bits used for accounting designed to keep businesses productive, people working, and the economy running, much as you might have in a video game. You make and destroy money as needed to support what needs to happen to make that work, much as a game developer might engineering money sources and sinks into an MMORPG. It's just bits on a computer.

Historical practice and the structure of banks is set around #2. This is a really sound theory if your currency is either backed by gold, or even is fiat currency, but running on the same principles.

Defaults aren't a problem with #1, unless they encourage bad behavior. If a bunch of poor people buy homes, and later default on mortgages, it's really not a big deal; bits on a computer appear and disappear. If 50% of those people come out owning homes, you're still ahead if 100% were still renting. But in #2, it's a financial crisis. Conversely, if a bunch of poor people can't buy homes and have to rent, it's a crisis in #1. It's not a problem in #2.

I'm not sure the mixture model works well -- indeed, I think that's the source of our problems. I think if we killed the banking sector, and folded all of this into the fed, it'd work great (that's what China does). I think if we had the gold standard again, that'd work pretty well too. But when you mix the two, things get a bit ugly.

<comment><USER33> There isn't some fundamental distinction between 1 and 2. For 1, there is obviously some positive social utility in the end or else it wouldn't be good policy. But such lending may require too much capital, too large a risk pool, or too long a time horizon for an individual private bank to take on. Instead a public or policy bank steps in.

It's good to have banks of different sizes serving different niches, as long as they assess risk prudently and price rationally. What you don't want is politicians micromanaging in domains in which they have no expertise, especially when they are driven by short-term, personal political objectives.

<comment><USER34> The fundamental difference is in incentives. If your incentive is to generate profits, you don't want to lend to the high-risk needy because you'll lose money. If your incentive is to provide another form of social security, you're willing to subsidize.

The problem comes when you force a business that really wants to align to the profit incentive (banks) to provide social subsidy by effectively charging their profit-generating customer base a premium. 1. They're incentivized to do the bare minimum necessary. 2. They're incentivized to stick to the letter and not the spirit of the law. 3. The transfer of wealth from paying to subsidized customers is opaque and nobody can do proper accounting.

This is a major source of corruption and inefficiency. It's the sort of problem that's all over the place whenever the private sector is forced into providing this sort of opaque cross-subsidy.

If I were to re-do this from scratch I'd privatize all the banks and let them do just the profit-making part, and have social programs solely as a function of the government, with a set yearly budget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wealthy Borrower: "Why can't I refi lower?"

Lender: "No, because your loan isn't secured by the government"

Wealthy Borrower: "I am just using logic here, you're telling me a riskier borrower with lower credit than me can refi?"

Lender: "If their loan is secured by the government, yes"

Wealthy Borrower: "I don't understand"

Lender: "Well at least we agree on something"

Are you really using logic? Seems like a dubious claim to me. Capitalism is a harsh mistress Mr.1%. Don't like it move to Denmark.

<comment><USER36> Just a nitpick, your mortgage isn't secured by the government. It's actually owned by the government, Fannie Mae. Your bank is just the middle man that services it. If your bank doesn't want to service it or the government don't think they are managing it correctly they will move it to another bank.

So I'm not surprised these banks don't want to touch jumbo loans right now. That debt is their risk. They can't wash their hands of it if it goes tits up.

<comment><USER37> > your mortgage isn't secured by the government. It's actually owned by the > government, Fannie Mae.

I'm confused what type of mortgages does this apply to? Is a conventional 20% down mortgages owned by the government somehow?

<comment><USER36> Conventional, FHA, and VA loans are owned by the government.

This came about after 2009 financial crisis, once regulators realized the banks were playing fast and loose with mortgage lending. Unlike TARP, they inherited that debt and have held onto ever since.

<comment><USER37> This is total news to me. So is the US housing industry owned by the US government?

My impression was:

\- conventional is within risk margins of banks and they own that risk

\- fha requires pmi, that is insurance you buy to cover the extra bank risk

\- va, mortgages to veterans that the government own

<comment><USER36> They don't own all of it, but they own the majority of what most people consider mortgages. The high-priced homes in NYC, LA, SF are more commonly jumbo loans. These are considered non-conforming and Fannie Mae can't touch 'em. The 3 you listed are conforming loans and will be absorbed by FannieMae/FreddieMac.

In my case, 30 days after we closed on a conventional loan, the bank sent us a letter stating the loan was transferred to Fannie Mae. They would continue to do the servicing of taking payments, collections, and closing for the next 30 years, hopefully. But SOP is close on the loan and send it to FannieMae.

The old days when you would closed the loan the bank would immediately package it and shop it around. Prior to the financial crisis your loan would constantly be moving around as if it was being traded on Wall Street, which it was. People were sending checks to banks that didn't even hold the loan.

<comment><USER37> > In my case, 30 days after we closed on a conventional loan, the bank sent us > a letter stating the loan was transferred to Fannie Mae

I don't think that happened to me, the bank kept taking my money so I assumed the owned the house that I was paying them back for.

> The old days when you would closed the loan the bank would immediately > package it and shop it around

This is probably mortgages 101, but why was that the case? Is it, in general, more favorable to sell off mortgage liabilities or where there conditions that made that true?

<comment><USER38> Your "servicing" and "note" on a mortgage are two different things. The servicing right is who gets to interact with you and charge you money, but the owner of the note actually gets the money in the end (minus servicing costs). Those can be transferred independently, so you may keep sending checks to one place, but the actual owner may change over time.

One reason to sell a mortgage is to get the money back. Instead of making money slowly over 30 years, you get some fraction of that as a lump sum plus your principal is returned. Some investors want the steady payout for more, others want fast turnover for less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Jumbo loans were people wanting more than they could afford and the bank hedging that they could actually afford it. Ends up that they can't.

<comment><USER40> I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.</comment></comment>


Jennifer Pahlka, Code For America founder Reddit AMA - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/wigka/im_jennifer_pahlka_founder_of_code_for_america/

<comment><USER2> I worked with Jennifer in the 1990s and even then she stood out as a classy person.</comment>


Apple Updates Prices in International iTunes Stores - <AUTHOR> http://www.macstories.net/news/apple-updates-prices-of-international-itunes-stores/

<comment><AUTHOR> This makes a lot of sense seeing as the Australian dollar is now worth more than the USD.</comment>


Show HN: Lispex, a lisp interpreter in Elixir - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/farazhaider/lispex <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. A detailed blog post about this project can be found here [https://medium.com/@sfhrizvi/writing-lispex-a-lisp- interpret...](https://medium.com/@sfhrizvi/writing-lispex-a-lisp-interpreter- in-elixir-423cd2c439ac)</comment>


EU wants to take lead in Web 3.0? technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;481264952

<comment><USER2> It sounds nice, but for that to happen there'd have to be a fundamental shift in how web technology is shaped. I think Europe will plan an increasingly important role in the future of the web, but that will likely be a slow rather than dramatic shift.

There could be a dramatic shift -- say, if the current US economic downturn is protracted and investment / exit opportunities in the US are significantly less plentiful than in Europe, but the more likely case is that if the US economy continues to perform poorly that it'll drag the EU down with it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't agree with this woman. She's talking about Web 3.0 as It were equal to Web 2.0 plus a bunch of technology. Actually I'm sharing the point of view of O'Reilly and I don't think logging in facebook on a microwave oven is Web 3.0. I don't know how it will be Web 3.0 but I suppose it won't happen without a change in the economic system.</comment>


Ask HN: How to Get Registered Users to Actually Use My Webapp - <AUTHOR>

I had a great launch... as a result of the niche coverage I received, a few thousand users are signed up and in. However, noone is actually using the site.
It's perplexing... the feedback is great. Anyone else have this happen and have any suggestions?
The site is a user-to-user marketplace. <comment><USER2> One of the lessons of every startup or application, is it is not always clear how to find the population of interest, and that it will take trying out many avenues, methods, and channels, again and again, to discover or grow the community of interest.

Perhaps the market niche is not compelling enough for people to use. Or you're finding a population that doesn't have a compelling desire or need.

It appears you hope for an almost obsessive population to be your desired market. (I'm thinking of the legendary Grateful Dead concert tape trading era as an example of an obsessive trading population and community.) Are there additional potential markets for trading person-to-person that have an unmet need that might have a compelling payoff for you to serve?

I notice that there is some similarity in function to the Craig's List and eBay and Amazon markets -- are they inadvertent competitors?

Is community trust, and trust building, or trustworthiness measurement an issue?

What if I want to search by genre, or by other kinds of dimensions, and not by publisher?

Does there need to be a forum for the obsessed? The site looks like a storefront, not a community coffee shop to hang out in.

Could it be worthwhile to contact one-hundred-plus signups personally, hoping for an informative conversation. What other means and methods do people use if not your application? What do they like about your app? What do they find lacking? Is the community big enough to serve the population you desire? Are you capable of contacting every new sign-up for a while to learn what new signups think?

Could it be worthwhile to have a friendly and informative process (email?) that contacts signups perhaps once a week, during their first weeks, or first month, to remind them of their interest and your offering?

Does this essay give any useful perspectives for you? (Paul Graham's "Do things that don't scale") [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> The word you are looking for is retention. You have to work on improving it. The basic idea is to get user's email address, twitter handle etc and remind him to come back to your site every now and then. You have to be careful with this though, it's quite easy to be labelled as a spammer if you don't do it right.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be fairly easy for us as we have "wantlists" and we do a good job (i think) of getting user information in the interest of establishing trust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How long has it been since the few thousand signed up?

What is your webapp?

What are the main features to keep people using it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Couple days for about 80% of them, but the other 20 have been there through iterations for almost a year.

The app is comicswap.com

a handful of the new features (from the "launch" email):

* Dedicated Comic Pages with Multiple Listings (no more 1 listing, 1 page setup)

* Wantlist - Add a comic to your wantlist and get an instant notification when someone lists it for sale or trade!

* Over 180,000 Unique Comics Available to Browse on the Site

* Many Comics Have eBay and other retailers Piped In along with Users Listings for Comparison Shopping

* Robust Feedback System (on swaps too!)

* New Messaging & Transaction System Allows for External Swaps (you dont even have buy/sell/trade through our site to be able to track and leave feedback on your swaps!)

* Mobile Design - works on phones, tablets... pretty much anything except stone slates from the prehistoric age.

* For dealers and those with lots of comics to sell -- you can subscribe to a feed of items that receive more than 5+ wants from users and receive an additional bounty for listing these items for a quick sale.

<comment><USER4> Its not bad. And very specific

The specificity of your app makes it that much easier to "reach out" to your demographic.

You need to be on the social networks as much as possible.

for example [http://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks](http://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks)

Also go to those cos play conventions and advertise on the floor. Get a stall

Maybe you already thought of all this but the biggest thing to remember is that it will take time because of how specific your app is.

If you want more and more people to use the app start selling action figures/ toys/ other comic book relevant stuff

I don't know anything about that stuff good luck

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clickable: [http://comicswap.com](http://comicswap.com)</comment>


Ask HN: Desktop tools for aws services? None to be found why? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there, I have been working with aws services(read DynamoDB, S3,SNS, SQS, etc) for a while now, and I am starting to get frustated with the state of affairs when in comes to the tools. I mean, don't get me wrong aws provides a fairly practical web console, where you can get your job done, however it is far from a pleasure to work with.
Why is that there is not desktop tools for aws services? Is the status-quo good enough for people out there. I can see at least a few ways in which a desktop tool can make life much easier specially when dealing with DynamoDB. I know that S3(, EC2?) do have some desktop counterparts but that is it.
In any case love to hear what people thing about it. <comment><USER2> A handful of reasons (disclaimer: painting with very wide brush here, in the hope that you get the strategic picture)

* The desktop market is fragmented. Pick your poison: walled garden with crappy devtools, OSS fanatics who will not pay for software in a million years; or warezing pirates. Note that whichever you choose, your app will still end up on torrent sites ~2 days after release anyways.

* The cross-OS development tools' end results are usually sub-pair, even compared with javascript.

* Desktop usage is, and has been stagnating for a while now; while mobile usage is growing at an incredible rate. Mobile native market is also highly fragmented.

* The lowest common denominator across all of these markets is the web: develop it once using responsive design, run it on everything for at least the next decade, or so.

* People have been voting for this platform with their wallets for a while now; specifically by being unable to pirate web apps.

* The stakeholders in selling AWS are: developers (for whom command line & APIs are the critical part), and business decision makers (who are looking for easy leverage). Neither target group is particularly interested in desktop apps.

* Specifically regarding to their propriatory tech (eg dynamoDB), developing a third-party desktop tool for it is a high-risk-no-reward endavour: you either get traction, in which case Amazon will gladly oblige with an app of their own; or it won't, in which case you're out with $lots$.

Joel Spolsky put it best: "Filling little gaps in another company's product lineup is snatching nickels from the path of an oncoming steam roller." ( [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html) )

<comment><AUTHOR> Enlightening comments, it indeed feels like a risky proposition given that any tech produced by a 3rd party vendor will always have the loosing hand against, tech produced inside Amazon.

Though desktop usage is stagnating, aws stakeholders probably do do their tasks in desktops, I really can't see a lot of devs moving to mobile devices to build things, thus this point seems mute to me.

The real question, as you said is, do developers really need/want these sort of tools? I am actually not 100% that a lot of devs will shy away from well engineered desktop tools, but at this point this is mostly a hunch feed by my own frustrations with the tools

In any case thanks for the bottom link, I enjoyed reading it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's good enough for me. After my resource is spun up, I'm talking to it directly through protocol so the AWS console is a quick and dirty on/off add/remove interface.

As someone who has worked with a lot of enterprise management tools, the situation could be MUCH worse than what AWS provides. Maybe that's why it doesn't bother me. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> If all you need is DynamoDB views, you could try RazorSQL [http://razorsql.com/articles/razorsql_amazon_dynamodb.html](http://razorsql.com/articles/razorsql_amazon_dynamodb.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe many that use these services are happy enough with awscli. They are targeting developers after all.

</comment><comment><USER6> Make some, even if they're minimal - it might be that Amazon themselves will be interested.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've seen desktop tools in the past but they seem to have been abandoned.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you have those links at hand maybe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What features are you looking for?</comment>


What not to do when giving technical interviews (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://seldo.com/weblog/2014/08/26/you_suck_at_technical_interviews <comment><USER2> There is at least one serious misconception in this article.

> _The famous fizzbuzz test simply asks "are you aware of the modulo > operator?"_

Nope. The famous fizzbuzz test simply asks "can you actually write code at all?", because it turns out that some people applying for software development jobs basically can't. Even people with relevant-looking experience on their CV/resume. Even people who talk convincingly about what they've done.

(If you don't know about your preferred language's modulo operator but can do truncating integer division, you can do FizzBuzz that way instead. If you don't know how to do division, you can do it by having counters that count up mod 3 and mod 5, or one counter that counts up mod 15, and you don't need "mod" in your vocabulary to do any of that.)

Now, whether a candidate can write code -- like whether they know their language's modulo operator -- is also just one bit of information, but it's a _really important_ bit of information that turns out to be tricky to get. This is also one reason for the "code on a whiteboard" tasks that many interviews use, which the author also doesn't like.

It may be that those are bad ways to get that one bit of information. But the author doesn't seem to appreciate what problem those things he criticizes are trying to solve.

<comment><USER3> OK, I'll write your desired fizzbuzz in Haskell in a way that you won't be able to understand it for the next 30 years. You'll moreover piss me off and get a placement on my blacklist of companies to never work for and me actively spreading the news about your interview to anyone capable I know, hoping nobody is going to waste time interviewing for your jobs. Happy now?

<comment><USER4> No, not happy now. Your technical skills may be off the charts, and your criticism of fizzbuzz may be completely valid, but I don't want people with that kind of attitude anywhere near my team.

There's going to be stuff that isn't done the way you want, in the company policies, in the code base, in the architecture, in the way the team works. If you're going to respond in an I'm-above-this, salt-the-earth kind of way when that happens, then no, I don't want to hire you. Go destroy some other workplace.

As I said, this is orthogonal to whether your criticism of the use of fizzbuzz is valid. Your response may make you feel better, but it's showing me a lot about who you are, and it's not improving your hireability.

If I were asked fizzbuzz in an interview, I think I'd say something like "I'll answer that. But I expect the rest of the interview to be at a considerably deeper level."

<comment><USER3> You are making amazingly far-reaching decisions from very limited information, a quality I definitely wouldn't want to see in my superior. A dislike of a certain test must mean "to destroy some workplace". I am now wondering if all the issues we see with politics lately are happening because people are becoming single-dimensional, unable to even consider someone else's view if the way it's presented slightly deviates from what they demand.

As somebody who was often interviewing other people fighting for jobs at top companies I worked for, I would never ever offend them by throwing FizzBuzz in their faces; I don't have such arrogance in me. I would rather try to figure out what clicks with them and throw them something tasty where they can show off, then increase pressure to see what needs more work, then explain/discuss what could have been improved. I would respect their time and help them to learn something on that single interview they had with me. Never throw into their faces that they are frauds which is implied by employing FizzBuzz. One doesn't have to be a super psychologist, just simple empathy is sufficient to understand that people perform best when they are respected and treated as adults.

<comment><USER4> In the great-grandparent, you said:

> > > You'll moreover piss me off and get a placement on my blacklist of > companies to never work for and me actively spreading the news about your > interview to anyone capable I know, hoping nobody is going to waste time > interviewing for your jobs.

Now you say:

> A dislike of a certain test must mean "to destroy some workplace".

That was a bit more than "a dislike of a certain test". If we hired you and you reacted that way to something you didn't like, that would be in "destroy the workplace" territory.

<comment><USER3> You mean me employing colored words, even if they nowadays became pretty much colloquial without harsh emotional content? In that case I apologize, though at that moment when I was writing it I wanted to emphasize that I viewed this whole FizzBuzz charade insulting, basically treating interviewees as frauds. I think sometimes for the sake of proper behavior reinforcement the use of those words is vital and they fulfill their proper linguistic function when needed, otherwise they wouldn't have existed. They likely made you feel bad, which is exactly what I wanted to achieve whenever anything about FizzBuzz is mentioned; I hope this feeling stays with you and just for the sake of feeling good you would avoid FizzBuzz from now onwards.

<comment><USER4> Your words made me feel bad about _you_ , not about myself or even about FizzBuzz. If your intent was to emotionally manipulate me into not using FizzBuzz, you utterly failed.

<comment><USER5> I have interviewed candidates for Senior DBA positions who didn't know to write a simple JOIN statement.

Reading this thread only solidifies my desire to ask for FizzBuzz, so that I weed out 2 types of candidates :

\- those who are too bad for it

\- those who are too good for it

<comment><USER3> I was specifically addressing the FizzBuzz problem as stated in the original article a few years ago, not some random sanity checks for some positions. If you read that article and used it in interviews, you'd have demonstrated to me your disregard of experience, your lack of inventiveness, laziness, and far reaching arrogance, qualities I wouldn't want to see in my superior, so it's obvious it'd be better to avoid each other and maybe meet only on the golf course or as competitors/suppliers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've recently learned via a few interviews at tech companies that interviewing for tech companies is a completely different skill to working at one. I'm sticking to contracting for now I guess.

<comment><USER7> Do you not have to go through the same interviews for contract work, assuming you are programming?

<comment><USER6> Usually it's a lot more straightforward. Contracts can be terminated at very short notice if you're not delivering so it's not usually worth spending a lot of time interviewing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anecdoctal, but while we are discussing narrow scope interviews... I just finished a physics PhD and applied to a finance firm. Before I get a chance to speak with a human, they send me a 15 problem 20 min timed exam. Some of the questions were easy and some required thought, unless you've been sitting around practicing riddles and LSAT questions all day. I timed out halfway through the exam. It wasn't even clear a priori how to navigate the exam, or if I could skip questions or how I would be graded. The company effectively canceled my application based on the 50% score.

Now, I've probably taken 100+ math exams in my life and I'd be happy to provide data from any one of them. Why trump all that data with 15 questions? Viewing the application process as a pure machine learning problem, their decision seems crazy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Totally agree. I hadn't seen this article until now, and I'm thankful for it because I think this is a message that needs repeating from many points of view. Engineering hiring is a farce through much of the industry.

I've written two articles along these same lines:

[https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_7973484](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_7973484)

[https://acjay.com/2019/05/16/hiring-developers-is- easy/](https://acjay.com/2019/05/16/hiring-developers-is-easy/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't say I agree with everything here. I've found live coding to be a useful way to gauge how someone thinks. Prior to the in-person interview, a 10-15 minute phone screen has already been done as well as a easy programming problem that takes most senior developers 5-10 minutes to solve it. So when we bring them in, we think they should be able to "pass" the interview.

When they arrive on site, we give them a 90% completed program that needs 2-3 lines of code to finish. We tell them they can use the web to look up anything they need to. We're mainly looking to see how the candidate thinks, and we discuss what they're doing and why. We're more concerned about the why than the what.

Once this is done (about 15-20 minutes in), we have a reasonable understanding if someone would be able to do the work. Next we try to figure out how much they would need to learn to be productive, and try to see if the candidate would be a good fit culturally.

We had one candidate who a minute or two into the live coding exercise said "Geez, I really don't think I can do this." I reminded him we weren't looking for a correct answer and to just give it a try, and he wouldn't. I thanked him for his time and ended the interview.

<comment><USER11> If this (finishing a program missing only a few lines of code) were all most coding interviews were, I don't think there'd be anywhere near as many complaints about them. That's very similar to what you'd actually be doing on the job.

It's coming up with what you took in your data structures/algorithms class a decade ago on the spot and write full functions about them, especially on a whiteboard, that gets really annoying, and makes programmers feel like they have to refresh their knowledge of an entire class (plus a bunch of other trivia from across CS) every time they want to find a new job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I agree entirely with the premise of the article.

One nit, though:

> The famous fizzbuzz test simply asks "are you aware of the modulo operator?"

FizzBuzz also tests basic programming skill, and it's surprising how often people fail _that_ part. FizzBuzz isn't necessarily the best test of that; I know one interviewer who instead uses "write a function to swap two numbers". But _some_ test of basic programming skill does help, albeit it should happen _long_ before the in-person interview.

<comment><USER13> How would you swap two numbers?

<comment><USER14> std::swap<>? CMPXCHG? LDREX/STREX?

The XOR trick is cute but you shouldn't use it on anything larger or more modern than a Cortex-M0. Just put it through a temporary variable and let register renaming deal with it.

(Perhaps a more interesting question would be a multi-threaded examination of swapping two numbers...)

<comment><USER15> It's interesting because this is a real answer that will get you hired. It demonstrates knowledge of: the "correct" way to do it, basic asm awareness, programmer culture, and computer architecture. This probably checks off like 6 boxes for most technical interviewers in one answer.

Finally it implies it could have asked a better interview question ;)

<comment><USER14> Thankyou. I try to strike a balance with these things - showing off is mandatory in interviews, but needs to be done politely. You don't want to go full "Hexing the Technical Interview": [https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing- the-technical-interview](https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical- interview)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sometimes I do have time constraints fixing a bug. In fact most of the time that constraint is imposed by me, because I have pride in my work. But at the same time I hope my manager understands that staring over my shoulder for 45 minutes doesn't help. Hopefully in my next interview I can get these ideas across respectfully.

<comment><USER17> There are different levels of distraction. Staring over my shoulder is one. Having a conversation with me about what I need to fix is another.

For some reason, I find it impossible to figure things out when I am looking over someone _else 's_ shoulder, or in a meeting, but when I am seated at my desk, it is vastly easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thank you for posting this. Not sure how many times these same points need to be repeated for it to sink in.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome. I'm not sure either. I think my main take-away from this article is that hiring is a human activity first and a technical one second.

There seems to be an attitude of "I had to go through this, so I don't see why new hires shouldn't" hidden under a thin layer of justifications but in fact we're playing a game with very limited information. We probably don't even have the tools to know if we're doing good or bad hires except in extreme cases. We almost certainly don't know if we're rejecting the wrong people. Still we pretend like it's working.

To me, it seems overly rigid, pattern-matching against a too-narrow idea of what a good developer/employee/team member is. So much could be improved by just adding some flexibility, but maybe we're afraid of losing the illusion of having a _Process_ and _Objective Criteria_.

Maybe I'm naive, but aren't we looking for what people are _good at_ and what they might bring to the table? Maybe someone likes programming puzzles and whiteboards, let them do it, but don't insist if it freaks another person out. Maybe someone else would rather do a take-home assignment, but don't insist on it if someone else don't have the will to do several hours of unpaid work. Others might prefer pair-programming in person, technical quizzes, Codility- style problem solving online, actual paid work on a project basis.

<comment><USER17> One self-defeating pattern is having different parts of the interview process filter out different types of people, so that neither one can make it through the whole process.

Sometimes (well, maybe even typically) the beginning and ending of an application process are with different groups, and types, of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> yoz-y I agree that it is best to hire people that will evolve as that is the crucial part of being a good engineer, but you still need people that know how to start, your company is not a school. The problem FizzBuzz test is trying to solve is not to find the good candidate, but to weed out the vast majority of applicants that can't code at all.

Depending on where you put your job postings you can get really swamped by them.

<comment><USER17> "to weed out the vast majority of applicants that can't code at all."

I think one ought to consider the possibility that if the vast majority of interviewees can't code at all, there is something wrong with the company/process. I mean, I'm not saying it necessarily follows, but the question is worth considering.

I have never been asked to implement FizzBuzz, so I can't buy the claim that "everybody does it".

Rightly or wrongly, if I was asked tomorrow, I wouldn't have the preconception that it was appropriate or necessary, and thus wouldn't necessarily choose to continue if I thought it was indicative of culture. If other people react similarly, it doesn't necessarily matter if it _is_ a reasonable standard of competence; you're still skewing the pool in other ways than you intend.

<comment> yoz-y I think FizzBuzz is an example, when I was interviewing I mostly got questions in this vein during first or second telephone screen (some companies use an online multiplayer notepad or some other method).

When I was doing interviews I was always mostly discussing motivation. Most of the time the hires turned out very good, but I did happen to have one bad one and it cost us quite some time.

<comment><USER17> I have had the experience of doing well on the programming test at the beginning of the process and being rejected for other reasons. Maybe counter- intuitively, that made me less interested in doing such tests, since in that case it wasn't determinative. It's possible that many or most places feel that to ensure someone doesn't cheat on a take-home, they must demonstrate their ability in the in-person interview. Which is logical, but it also makes me think that going through a process starting with a take-home is a waste of my time, as long as it's not a universal requirement.

<comment> yoz-y What you describe is normal. Assignments usually go from easy to hard because usually it is faster to solve the easy problems and usually these questions can be also asked by less technical people. Several companies I have interviewed with had the first programming questions asked by recruiters (who clearly had CS background, but most probably just shifted careers)

<comment><USER17> What I'm talking about had a much more involved test than Fizzbuzz at the beginning, IIRC something like 5 small projects, but with your choice of language, and a generous amount of time (days). During the interview, it was simpler, but in an environment I'd never used before and a language which I had disclosed up front I didn't have recent experience in. It seemed like they were only interested in hiring new college grads at the end, but perversely the process started by senior people referring me and screening me. While I admit it sounds like sour grapes, I thought later that the organization probably had communication/coordination problems that would've made it unpleasant to work for.

In some organizations, they start by recruiting people they think have talent in general, and then the interview is about finding where you fit in.

In others, they have a very specific need and they focus on winnowing down the pool to get the (hopefully) best person for it.

The place I'm talking about seemed to have a split personality.

Also, I've had enough interviews, both successful and unsuccessful, to be clear that there is no "normal". Every place is unique, as was this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "No Assholes policy"

The golden question being "who gets to decide who is an asshole"

Ironically a paragraph down they say:

"You are NOT hiring for "team fit""

<comment><USER20> Right? It's the same age old question as "Whose code is the worst?" Not surprisingly it's always someone else's code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As pointed out in the article, fizzbuzz doesn't test "can you code at all", it tests "can you code under interview conditions, including highly unnatural ones like on a whiteboard".

On the other hand, "hiring for future potential" sounds great but is _really_ vulnerable to personal bias since it's inherently about the unknown future. If you want to run a deterministic interview process you need to have a standard set of questions and a rubric for assessing answers, written up in advance.

<comment><USER21> If you can't write fizzbuzz in a few minutes on a whiteboard, even in pseudocode, then you _can 't_ code.

<comment><USER22> I can't write fizzbuzz in a few minutes on a whiteboard under interview conditions, but I've shipped multiple products over three decades. Several of them are from 50% to 100% code written by me.

The syllogism you're proposing overlooks some human variables.

Interpersonal interaction tends to completely occupy my cognitive capacity, the moreso if the other person is a stranger, or if they are challenging me in some way (such as, for example, posing puzzles and evaluating the quality of my answers). I can't think about logical operations under those conditions. I require peace and detachment from human concerns in order to think that way.

This is, of course, a personal quirk, or, if you prefer, disability, and nobody should have to bear the burden of it but me. But I've been an actual 10X programmer on a shipping product, as verified by DVCS statistics. I submit that as evidence that I can, in fact, code. I just can't do it in interview conditions.

I also can't navigate while interacting with someone. I can drive just fine; I can operate a vehicle safely. I just can't _navigate_. Everyone in my close family is aware of this limitation. When my daughter was a teenager, she exploited this quirk for laughs. I have to admit, I thought it was pretty funny, too. In particular, I remember a pause in a conversation where I looked around and realized that I was parked at a Safeway in Capitola, California, and had no idea how I got there. My daughter and I both laughed when I realized what had happened.

But if you want me to drive, and you want to reach a specific, predictable destination, you have to leave me alone to navigate.

Similarly, if you want me to be a 10X programmer, or indeed any kind of working programmer, you have to leave me alone to do it.

Maybe I'm not the only one.

I won't argue that you should accommodate me, or people like me. Maybe you don't need us. That's okay. I've found other ways to get by--being hired by people already familiar with my other work, for example, or making my own products. It's maybe a less predictable career path than the usual, but it's worked so far.

But for obvious reasons, I can't agree with your claim.

<comment><USER21> There's always an exception that proves the rule. I'm sure, though, if you could provide an explanation like this and then provide and walk them through some already-written code examples, that would also be acceptable?

I'd take someone who says "I can't live-code while talking about it, but here's an example of my code and I can explain how it works" over someone who tries to BS me.

<comment><USER22> Yep, I can do what you suggest, and I've done it before. It can go a little sideways, though, depending on the questions you ask. If your question requires me to do what I can't do in an interview setting, then neither you nor I will be happy with the result.

Don't get me wrong; you as an interviewer are not under any obligation to adapt your hiring process to my quirks.

On the other hand, I'm not under any obligation to participate in a hiring process I don't like, either. I stopped participating in hiring processes I don't like around two decades ago, and I've survived anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think next time I interview someone I'll ask them to fizzbuzz:

\- if they are confident and fail, I'll pass on them

\- if they are nervous and we'll fail, we'll talk about it, and move on with the interview

\- if they succeed, I'll move on w/the interview

\- if they refuse, I'll hire them immediately and recommend them for promotion

</comment><comment><USER24> You lost me at Joel Spolsky.

Hosting a tech Q&A site doesn't make you the canonical source of how to structure interviews.

The live coding interview style was a toxic and negative contribution to the tech industry as a whole, IMO.

<comment><USER25> Sorry, but I strongly disagree with you. Reading the cited book (Smart and gets thing done) was an absolute eye opener for me, and for every person that I have recommended it to.

Really, you should read it (unless you were only trolling). It is a very fast read and full of insight.

Also, "tech Q&A site " is a huge mischaracterization of Joel's blog. He has really insightful articles like "Evidence based Scheduling", or the ones about (not) rewriting-code.</comment></comment>


Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/ <comment><USER2> Here is the study mentioned in the second main paragraph:

[http://saveoursoils.com/userfiles/downloads/1351255687-Chang...](http://saveoursoils.com/userfiles/downloads/1351255687-Changes%20in%20USDA%20food%20composition%20data%20for%2043%20garden%20crops,%201950-1999.pdf)

Conclusion: We suggest that any real declines are generally most easily explained by changes in cultivated varieties between 1950 and 1999, in which there may be trade-offs between yield and nutrient content.

Worth noting there is no use of the phrase "soil depletion".

I take issue with the comment near the end:

> Also, foregoing pesticides and fertilizers in favor of organic growing > methods is good for the soil, the produce and its consumers. Those who want > to get the most nutritious fruits and vegetables should buy regularly from > local organic farmers.

To my knowledge, organic farming employs just as much, if not more, pesticide and fertilizer. But there are regulations determining which products are allowed to be classed as "organic". Such regulations can be somewhat arbitrary; for example, a lot of so-called organic produce is the product of radiation-induced mutation [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding)

<comment><USER3> _To my knowledge, organic farming employs just as much, if not more, pesticide and fertilizer._

If this is true, I would love to see your source.

I buy a lot of organic because I expect it to have less pesticide (and other potentially 'bad' things). And, if that's not the case, I will change my buying habits.

I do understand that there is a fraud issue in organics. I have seen examples of farmers owning organic certified farms and then buying produce from the distribution market to resell as organic. Also, I have seen examples of people doing similar things at farmers markets.

<comment><USER4> There's "FDA Organic" which meets the government standards (which are somewhat weak) and then "Real Organic" from farmers who hold themselves to the original meaning of being pesticide and GMO-free. The problem is that as a shopper, you can't tell the difference, unless you sign up with a CSA and get to know your food supplier personally.

<comment><USER5> Does "organic" include GMO-free? I thought it just meant pesticide-free, and I don't take any issue with GMO foods.

<comment><USER6> Yes, even the USDA standards, which I think is what the GP was referring to, seem to prohibit GMO...

[https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2013/05/17/organic-101-can-g...](https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2013/05/17/organic-101-can- gmos-be-used-organic-products)

<comment><USER7> GMO is basically equivalent with spraying of glyphosate. The whole point of most GMO is to make the plants resistant to glyphosate. If you don't want to eat glyphosate you avoid GMO foods.

<comment><USER8> There are different kinds of GMO—in addition to RoundupReady (glyphosate resistant) crops, there are Bt crops (mainly corn, as far as I know) that react in an insect's alkaline gut to form incecticidal protein fragments. The bacterial source of the genes is also used as an organic incecticide, and has no plausible mechanism for causing harm in humans that I am aware of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The quality of Scientific American has dropped off significantly in the past 20 years, but this article is astonishingly bad:

* Vegetables _are_ lower in nutrients than in the 1950's.

* Here is some serious academic research that shows that.

* It indicates that the cause is the breeding and cultivation of varieties which are lower in nutritional content by farmers.

* But I will assert absent any evidence, soil depletion.

WTF, Scientific American?

<comment><USER10> I noticed the same thing.

It would be easy enough to test - there's plenty of pristine, hardly used, soil around.

You can also test different cultivars in different soils and see what the real cause is.

<comment><USER11> >there's plenty of pristine, hardly used, soil around.

Gonna need a [citation needed] on that one.

<comment><USER12> Drive through the flyover states and you can see it all for yourself. If you're not on the interstate, you can drive at 80mph without seeing another car for some time.

It's actually really beautiful how untouched some parts of the US are. Hopefully they can stay that way for some time.

<comment><USER13> The Midwest may have a low density of cars, but the arable land is largely farmed; it isn't pristine, untouched wilderness.

<comment><USER12> I was born on a farm in rural Ohio, so I can appreciate the difference. I'm thinking more of Wyoming.

<comment><USER14> But that land is probably not suitable for farming - because if it was, someone would probably have a farm on it. So then you're comparing soil-not- great-for-farming from then and now, which is something, but it's not what we really care about (soil-used-for-farming).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Since the question was specifically about carrots, it is interesting to note wild carrots were originally white, then once domesticated white, yellow and purple. The Dutch cultivated orange carrots in the 17th century.

There are no shortage of articles about the difference between modern and medieval fruits/vegetables, but if you haven't seen one take a second: [https://amp.businessinsider.com/foods-before-genetic- modific...](https://amp.businessinsider.com/foods-before-genetic- modification-2015-8)

<comment><USER16> One of the major benefits of new vegetables is that people don't hate eating them. Many modern, heavily modified vegetables are plenty good; I've seen too many people give this as an excuse for not bothering.

Added:

Perhaps somebody could market some varieties specifically for nutritional content, I would not be against that. The biggest problem there is that we still don't really know what "nutritious" even means.

<comment><USER17> I have doubts about people not hating modern vegtables - the modern ag industry has bred almost all the flavor out of tomatoes for example in a quest for ever better transportability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A greater issue than soil depletion is the loss of phytonutrients through selective breeding for taste and early picking of produce for ease of transportation. A fantastic book on this subject, with advice for how to find produce with higher phytonutrient content, is _Eating on the Wild Side_ [0].

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Wild-Side-Missing- Optimum/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Wild-Side-Missing- Optimum/dp/0316227935)

</comment><comment><USER19> Here's a real question -- even if they're less nutritious individually, are we still able to get more nutrition than ever before?

The variety of fruits and vegetables I'm able to eat during the winter is frankly astounding. Heck, even the variety during the _summer_ is a cornucopia compared to 30 years ago (the local supermarket certainly didn't carry kale or swiss chard back then).

If I'm more easily to get whole different sets of nutrients than before, is it a net win?

<comment><USER20> This is undeniably true, but I understand that the micro-nutrient density is now lower than before, so that to get a given amount of a micro-nutrient you need to eat more calories. It is speculated that this is one of the reasons behind the obesity epidemic of the Western World.

<comment><USER21> I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the obesity epidemic is not because folk are stuffing more kale down their gullets.

5+ years ago it was very noticeable to me, going from the UK to the US, that almost all shop bought food was bigger and sweeter. From breakfast cereal to drinks to bread.

I've also noticed that this trend is fairy pervasive here too. You have to go out of your way to find a burger that's not in a brioche bun, for example. I can't comment on whether we've caught up with the States as I now can't eat most breakfast cereals or drink most soft drinks (including mass market beers) because they're too sweet.

<comment><USER20> >>>I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the obesity epidemic is not because folk are stuffing more kale down their gullets.

Of course you are right. I did not meant this. I was referring that, in general, your brain will seek more food as the nutrient density is now lower than before. This applies to all the food you eat, not only veggie and fruits.

On top of this we have high-calorie, high-palatable, low micro-nutrient foods that make all this much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As an organic farmer I'm disturbed by how few commenters here understand what organic produce is.

"Certified organic" (aka USDA organic) means the farmer complied with a very strict list of regulations spelled out in the National Organic Program's Final Rule [1] and audited by an accredited certifying agent. See [2] for the TLDR version of the final rule.

"Organic" produce (aka non-certified organic) doesn't mean shit. The farmer may be following organic practices or may not be. YOU are the auditor in this case. Visit the farm and observe their practices with your own eyes before spending extra on this "organic" produce.

Bottom line: If you're concerned about synthetic fertilizers, GMOs, and/or sustainable agricultural practices in general, make sure you're buying USDA certified organic produce. Or grow the stuff yourself.

[1]: [https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text- idx?c=ecfr&sid=3f34f4c22f9...](https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text- idx?c=ecfr&sid=3f34f4c22f9aa8e6d9864cc2683cea02&tpl=/ecfrbrowse/Title07/7cfr205_main_02.tpl)

[2]: [https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Organic%2...](https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Organic%20Practices%20Factsheet.pdf)

<comment><USER23> People also seem to conflate "organic" with "healthy". I had past coworkers who thought it was absurd that an energy drink was labeled as organic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We know that picking produce before peak ripeness results in lower nutrient densities. And from a logistics point of view, higher yields almost inevitably mean earlier picks, to compensate for the more intense logistics of serving geographically larger markets from the same source. It makes me wonder how much of the nutrient decline is due to sampling baseline changes.

I'd be interested to see if there are significant differences in nutrient density for canned produce, which should significantly cut down on this potential error. Canned produce is almost universally canned and sealed within 24 hours of pick, and as such they almost always pick right in the window of peak ripeness, as opposed to several weeks before like most "fresh" produce.

<comment><USER25> This is why I have found a favorite brand of canned tomatoes and only cook with them unless I can pick my own tomatoes or find them at the farmer's market. Supermarket tomatoes often taste terrible!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> back in 89, I worked as a farm hand for a season which was a fascinating experience for many reasons. But I remember the farmer complaining about the tomatoes grown for export were tasteless and devoid of nutrition and he hated them with a passion... But they packed well due to uniform growing shape, looked good - perfectly round, had consistent color, and lasted longer without spoiling.... And supposedly this is what the consumer wanted. When people go through the produce section, its almost all looks and price that the majority of people judge fruit on. Although now, people do seem to be thinking of and talking more about how their food is made. But I am not sure how much of that really is a general trend and how much of that is the company I keep or the country I live in.

<comment><USER27> Unfortunately true. Farms have a lot of trouble selling "ugly fruit" and a lot of it gets thrown away. Fruit & vegetables have to meet a cosmetic standard to get into the grocery store.

Some companies are starting to appear to capitalize on this though: [https://www.imperfectproduce.com/](https://www.imperfectproduce.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The problem comes down to our demand for out of season fresh vegetable(of a very limited selection) with an extended shelf life.

The fact that we do not want to eat frozen and canned vegetables is forcing the cultivation industry to select against healthy variants in order to provide the health conscious consumer with the illusion of healthy food all year round.

</comment><comment><USER29> (this was posted as a subcomment, but deserves to be a top-level comment)

Another explanation/hypothesis which is rarely talked about is rising CO₂ levels: [https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food- nutrie...](https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients- carbon-dioxide-000511)

This even goes so far as harvesting CO₂ from the atmosphere and indiscriminately feeding it to greenhouse crops, while we know that many plant varieties will respond by having far less available nutrients for human consumption.

</comment><comment><USER30> It'd be interesting to see a study that tried to tease apart the extent depleted soil contributes to the problem and the extent that faster growth (and faster harvest) just results in less nutrients.

Many vitamins contain only carbon, hydrogen and oxygen and there are even more if you add nitrogen and phosphorus, both of which are in "basic" fertilizer. So none of those are particularly going to be soil limited.

<comment><USER31> Yes but some say the soil may be getting deficient in _minerals_ : zinc, selenium, magnesium etc...

<comment><USER30> Those can be fertilized, but that is only going to happen if they are limiting plant growth.

Fertilizing for calcium and magnesium availability is pretty common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Even though the debate about the amount of nutrition in organic/non-organic is unsettled, I think it's still worth buying organic to reduce pesticide exposure.

Here is a good article summarizing studies on soaking fruits and veggies (both organic and conventional) in baking soda to strip away pesticides.

Here's a key quote from the article:

"Even with bicarbonate, buying organic may still be worth it!

One thing this article should not be abused is as evidence in an argument against buying organic. Yes, you can reduce the pesticide load on the peel of your favorite produce to almost zero and yes, even the latest (highly pro- organic) review of the literature highlights that pesticides are where the major differences are, but you're (a) still left with the pesticides beneath the skin and will (b) not benefit from the other potential benefits Tiziano Gomiero highlights in his latest paper in Applied Soil Ecology (see Figure 4)."

[http://suppversity.blogspot.com/2017/10/nahco3-aka-baking- so...](http://suppversity.blogspot.com/2017/10/nahco3-aka-baking-soda-washes- all.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER33> i assume the article was most interested in discussing 'soil depletion' but another unsettling variable in this is the 'nutrient collapse'

wherein elevated CO2 levels in the grow environment correlates negatively with nutrient content of plants

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016953470...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534702025879)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4036122/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4036122/)

[https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food- nutrie...](https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients- carbon-dioxide-000511)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15253127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15253127)

</comment><comment><USER34> Solution:

1\. buy some land

2\. grow your own food

3\. learn how to preserve it

[https://www.amazon.com/New-Complete-Book-Self-Sufficiency- Re...](https://www.amazon.com/New-Complete-Book-Self-Sufficiency- Realists/dp/0751364428)

</comment><comment><USER35> Maintaining a fruit and vegetable garden is more than just a hobby. My family and in-laws have said for years how nutrient deficient produce from chain grocers is. There's a huge difference between locally grown and foreign imported produce. This has compelled us to grow and take gardening much more seriously.

Garden culture for the win.

</comment><comment><USER36> Has anyone seen any research looking at the nutritional content of something that is picked fresh verse picked unripe and shipped? I'm really curious how this might impact food quality. I know it's the only way to do it but I always wonder if those expensive blueberries are really worth it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Pretty soon we're about to have a lot of rich farmers. And a lot of VCs wondering why they didn't get in on this market earlier.

Glad to see these pieces popping up on here as it helps bring into the discussion that there's outside factors at play that will be driving this change in the industry.

</comment><comment><USER38> Here is a Christian biblical practice used for soil conversation in Kenya. They line up with what the Scientific American was saying:

[http://www.arcworld.org/projects.asp?projectID=633](http://www.arcworld.org/projects.asp?projectID=633)

</comment><comment><USER39> The veg version of: You are what you eat eats.

Makes me wonder how this has contributed to obesity, as well as other illnesses (e.g., depression). That is, if you're not getting the nutrients need there are going to be "side effects."

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't know about the nutritional value, but I've heard that the mineral composition of soil can directly affect the flavor of fermented grape juice. This may require some personal research on the matter...

</comment><comment><USER41> It was my understanding that nutrient absorption took time and the use of fertilizers to rapidly grow multiple crops during a season was the primary factor behind the decline in nutrient density in crops.

</comment><comment><USER42> Hope [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borlaug](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borlaug) is reborn

</comment><comment><USER43> This article (and most of this discussion) completely misses the elephant in the room.

The reason food crops are less nutritious has nothing to do with their soil and everything to do with their food: CO2.

It's widely held and widely accepted that if you give plants a higher concentration of CO2, they will grow faster. They will take up more space in less time.

We also know that the CO2 levels on Earth have been skyrocketing.

Thanks to CO2, these plants now spend substantially less time in the field before they get harvested, so it stands to reason they'd spend less time taking up minerals and vitamins, or forming them themselves.

<comment><USER44> Are you going to cite a source that substantiates this? CO2 emissions are a politically charged topic so there's an extra-strong reason to only believe a reliable source

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is exactly why I signed up for a CSA ( know your farmer ) and planted a food forest in my back yard. I know exactly what went into it.

</comment><comment><USER46> I hope it's not too late to change the title. A yes/no question is against HN guidelines.

</comment><comment><USER47> The article mentions organic as possibly more nutritious. Are there any studies which prove this, and give comparative organic / non-organic nutritional values?

<comment><USER48> Second this question. Most conclusions I heard so far were "Organic is not healthier", which is contrary to what the author states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> People need to wake up and realize: organic foods are not just about decreasing one's exposure to pesticides - its about saving the soil so our Earth can produce food! Pesticides and modern industrialized agriculture will render the soil useless for food production.

<comment><USER50> > People need to wake up and realize Clearly you have considered their > arguments and respectfully disagree...

> organic foods are not just about decreasing one's exposure to pesticides - > its about saving the soil so our Earth can produce food!

Great - I love eating! But do you have any evidence that "organic" as a label actually supports saving the soil? I can find evidence that organic shoppers desire that result, and I can find claims that "natural" fertilizers and pesticides "are believed" to better for the soil, but not much evidence.

Like GMOs, the "organic" and "natural" labels are so broad as to be useless if you are trying to talk about common truths.

I support sustainability. I oppose animal cruelty. I support consumers being able to make informed buying decisions. I'm not convinced the labels we have now actually promotes those goals.</comment></comment>


Lock Down a Paid Subscriber On Visit #1 | DollarShaveClub's Mancave UX Clubhouse - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jasonshah.org/post/18921010795/lock-down-a-paid-subscriber-on-visit-1 <comment><USER2> 1\. Regarding looking like everyone's friend -- if you don't look like everybody's buddy, hire a spokeperson who is. George W Bush is said to have become president because he looked like someone everyone wanted to have a beer with. Not the quality I go for when choosing "Leader of the Free World", but if it worked for him it'll work for your startup. If you're a gangly ugly dude with an accent, hire a different rep.

2\. I am conflicted on play video on load. Basically I suspect that most people in our space can't make content this good deliberately, so I don't want to encourage it.

3\. One action button. This is interesting. On the one hand, I want to have a demo page and a "sign up for our email list" because email lists are demonstrated to have higher conversion rates than sign up (and email lists are documented to convert better). On the other hand I too enjoy the uncluttered simplicity of a 1 option page. The question is: do you want to forgo conversion for that warm fuzzy feeling? I'd rather take dollars. I think the lesson here is -- just test. However, prior determination that one button is best is dangerous.

4\. Re. #8 (if you have to interrupt a checkout with sign up, do it tactfully and painlessly). I think you are being a bit fanboy here. It seems like the obvious UX advice is -- DON'T interrupt the checkout process with sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Eric - thanks for jumping in as always. Fair points all around. Specifically on the checkout interruption for which I am being a fanboy (!), I think DollarShaveClub gets a couple subtle things uniquely right.

1\. Show this as part of the 1, 2, 3 checkout flow by indicating it is Step 2 of 3. This makes signing up for an account natural rather than an aberration.

2\. Continue the theme of man-laws, etc. alongside the sign up element; too often the sign up element is isolated and looks like pure work to fill out.

I think their UX has a lot to still improve, frankly, but getting these specific aspects support my guess that they're having a breakout week with the traffic from this newly viral video.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does DollarShaveClub represent an inflection point for verticalized subscription services now that the UX has been potentially nailed for streamlined checkout? I was super impressed with how fast they got me to sign up, but as usual, I could be an outlier. I have never signed up for a subscription product this fast, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that the reason this site is so successful is something that startups often overlook-- content is a key part of UX. Take away the awesome video and the snazzy copy, with the same exact UI and concept, and you'd be left with a service that would be much, much less compelling

</comment><comment><USER4> very, very good analysis. great write up jason. saving this one.</comment>